


A Knowing Heart

by storyplease



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Mystery, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 18:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5938294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyplease/pseuds/storyplease





	A Knowing Heart

**** Everyone thought that Luna Lovegood was strange,  _ loony _ even.

 

Hence that ridiculous nickname.

 

Luna knew better.  She knew her mind.  And, what was more important, she knew her  _ heart _ .

 

The problem was, hearts were fickle, and were prone to change in moments.  She did not begrudge those around her for being unable to hear the difference.  Still, she remained kind to her heart and its needs.

 

That is, until she met Harry Potter.

 

Ginny was the closest thing she had to a friend, which was to say, she didn’t call Luna by her nickname to her face, and generally gave what-for to those in class who did even though she didn’t have to do so.

 

This was a new development, and Luna’s mind was intrigued.  Luna’s heart, on the other hand, was taken.  She began to follow Ginny, finding excuses to stay nearby.  She knew that this would not reflect on her kindly, but her heart did not care.

  
And Luna followed her heart.

 

Luna knew how Ginny felt about Harry, that it hadn’t gone away, not even when she’d begun dating around.  When Ginny had first mentioned how Harry’s green-eyed stare made her heart go pitter-pat, Luna listened.  And she marked Harry down as Taken.

 

Off Limits.

 

It was the first time she ignored the twinge in her heart.

 

Luna busied herself with finding material for her father’s paper, and exploring the castle, which was full of Wrackspurts flitting around and looking for a nice, empty head in which to nest. Poor Harry was the worst of the lot- his head looked as though a veritable swarm had taken up residence, and finally Luna could stand it no longer.  She had to speak to him, help him.

 

That’s all it was, she promised herself.  She just wanted to help.

 

Her heart beat a steady rhythm of  _ I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. _

 

She could make Harry laugh in the nice way that one laughs with a friend, not the mean way, the one where the laughter hits the heart like the killing strike of a blade.  She knew that his mind might not always understand her but his heart understood all the same.

 

But between them there was always that sign that Luna had erected.

 

Taken.  Off-Limits.   _ Ginny’s _ .

 

Luna could no more betray a friend than she could betray her family.

 

The Wrackspurts closed in on her, filling her with snarls of gloomy thoughts.

 

For the first time in years, since the day her mother died, Luna did not have the heart to remove them.

 

It was then that Harry invited her to Slughorn’s party.  It was then that her heart leapt and she was filled with an almost ethereal lightness of being.  He’d looked at her outfit as though seeing her for the first time, though her heart knew that he’d seen her all along.

 

It was growing more and more difficult to tell her heart that she  _ couldn’t _ , she  _ wouldn’t _ ...that Ginny…

 

Harry smiled at her warmly and Luna’s mind went blank, which would be difficult to blame on the Wrackspurts, as they abhorred blank minds.  She could practically hear them making their annoyed little snorting grunts as they fled from her head.

 

But none of that mattered.  She felt special in that moment in a way that she wouldn’t have otherwise felt had it not been for Harry.

 

And then, it seemed, things went all wrong.  Harry and Ginny got together after that fateful Quidditch match.  Then, the headmaster was killed and it was no longer safe for Harry to be at school. The last she had seen of them were at Bill and Fleur’s wedding. Harry had not looked like himself, then; some kind of glamour had been placed on his face.  It didn’t matter.  She knew him at once.  How could she not?

 

She’d nearly mustered up the courage to ask him to dance with her when the Death Eaters had come.  Her father had Side-Along Apparated her back to their home at once and Luna did not learn until later that Harry and his friends had escaped, but not if they were safe.  She knew in her heart, though, that they were.

 

But it did not make the ache of the loose ends between them hurt any less.

 

He and his two friends were on the run, then, and Luna did not see them for months and months.  All the while, she watched Ginny pretending to be over Harry.  The young Gryffindor girl fashioned herself as a worldly witch, going to bed with whoever asked, including, if it were to be believed, other witches, and even  _ groups _ as well. 

 

Luna did not care about the implications of these rumors.  She still loved her best friend.  But her heart ached when she saw Ginny smile, her arms wrapped around Dean and Seamus in more than a friendly sort of gesture, as they sat in the Great Hall.

 

She knew that Harry would not smile if he saw this.

 

Luna had a strange feeling from time to time, as though she was being watched.  She couldn’t help but think that it was not some errant ghost or one of the enchanted paintings, but Harry who was looking down on her from far away, watching where she was going.

 

For she knew of the Marauder’s Map, and she knew that he must still have it.  Soon after, she began to leave messages in her footsteps, just in case.  People would often accuse her of meaning to run into them in her erratic walks, but she paid them no mind. With her feet she spelled out “Be Strong, Harry!” in long, cursive letters made of her footsteps.  She found secret passageways and came up with creative names for them, writing them down with thick, white chalk on the stone floors so that they might show up in the map.  “I Know You Can Do It Passage” and “I Think Of You Passage” were her favorite.  She’d debated creating a “My Heart Is Yours Passage,” but then thought better of it.  After all, she did not want him to bear the weight of her feelings, not with everything he was going through.

 

And though her heart protested, she told herself again and again that it could wait.  

 

In the darkness of her denial, her heart began to lose hope that her mind would ever listen again.

* * *

  
  


Harry had always been fond of Luna Lovegood, though her behavior could be eccentric and more than a little odd. She wasn’t like Fleur with her endless sex appeal.  And she most certainly was not like Hermione, who was just like a sister to Harry.  And while Ginny prided herself on being wild and spontaneous, Harry knew that Luna’s wildness was far closer to that of nature itself- incomprehensible yet breathtaking. 

 

And, for all of her oddities, Luna was one thing that none of the others could truly be- Luna was  _ safe _ . Harry could say anything without fear of being attacked or judged.  With Luna, he could simply be himself.  She never pushed him to talk about the Big Weighty Issues he carried on his shoulders, and she always changed the subject when he found himself in a negative tailspin of self-loathing.  Luna, more than anyone in his life, always seemed to know far more than she was letting on, but never offered anything unless it was requested.  There was many a time when, while Ron and Hermione slept on the floor and the couch of the dusty haphazard sleeping room they’d scrounged together at Grimmauld Place, Harry wished that he could talk to Luna the way they’d talked after Slughorn’s party, when she’d appeared as though by magic and whisked him away to the kitchens to have a late night snack.  She’d calmed him down with talk of Squibbly-squees and their penchant for drinking quill ink during exams, which is why it is important to always bring a small container of salt to flick over one’s left shoulder, as this scares them away. And though Harry had never seen any of these fantastic creatures, a part of him wanted to when he saw Luna’s eyes light up as she described them in vivid detail.

 

While he knew that they were no longer together- Harry had made certain to break up with Ginny before leaving-it twisted his heart in knots every time he saw someone new spending the night with Ginny on the Marauder’s Map. Sure, he’d known that Ginny had always been fairly free-spirited in her nighttime activities before he’d come along, but a part of him had wanted that for himself, and yet, Ginny had told him that when she had her first time with him, she wanted it to be special.  That special time had never arrived- they’d planned on doing something after the wedding- after all, it was Harry’s birthday.  

 

But fate had other plans.

 

After they’d lost their home base at Grimmauld Place, Harry began to despair, obsessively looking at the Marauder’s Map whenever he could.  It didn’t help that he was forced to wear the horrid horcrux locket many times a day and it twisted his feelings until he felt as though no one cared at all. 

 

In his darker moments, he wondered if Ginny had only dated him to check his name off the list of eligible students to snog.

 

To soothe his tattered, harried heart, Harry spent his time looking for his other friends, hoping against hope that they’d still be there.  He’d heard of the disappearances, of the Snatchers, once Ron had returned.  It was then that he noticed that Luna’s footsteps were spelling words.  At first, he thought he was crazy, but then he realized that when it came to Luna, crazy often made sense.  The first one he found was “Go Harry,” which at first, he thought he’d read wrong, but when he realized it meant “Go, Harry!” (as punctuation is rather hard to make in footsteps), his heart had soared.  Luna’s footsteps were always the first that he looked for from then on, getting a tiny thrill in his chest when he saw another tiny, secret message just for him.

 

Not long after that, he noticed that the secret passages at Hogwarts, which had only ever been named “Secret Passage,” now had names, all of which were names that seemed to be there for his benefit and his benefit alone. These too gave him strength and he wondered at Luna’s ingenuity.

 

His heart began to wonder other things as well, but he tried very hard to put it out of his mind.  After all, the war took precedence.  And who could say if either of them would survive when all was said and done?

 

Still, he traced his finger over the parchment in wonder, and his eyes softened whenever he saw her name on the Map.  

 

_ Luna _ .

 

Her name was in his mind when he was injured by Hermione’s hex to alter his face.  When they Apparated to Malfoy Manor with the Snatchers holding them fast.  When they were thrown to the floor in front of Bellatrix LeStrange, who threw him and Ron into the root cellar while she tortured Hermione above them.

 

“Harry, is that you?”

 

“Luna?”

 

Her name was on his lips before he could think.

 

She was dirty and her face was smudged and grimy, but it was Luna, same as she always was.

 

Harry hugged her tight, and something passed between the two, a strange jolt of energy, perhaps.  But then it was over as Hermione’s screams pierced the air again and Ron cried out every swear word he knew cursing Bellatrix to hell.

 

In retrospect, Harry had trouble remembering the sequence of events that had saved them from the terrible fate at the Manor.  Dobby had appeared, and then Dobby was dead, but everyone else had escaped just in time, it seemed.

 

Harry was still numb with grief.  How could Dobby be dead?  How could everything have gone so wrong?  He stood on the shore near Shell Cottage, looking down at the tiny grave, and he couldn’t think clearly.  He didn’t want to think.  He just wanted everything- the pain, the responsibility, the weight of all that had transpired- to simply disappear.

 

“Harry…” Luna’s voice was sad, but she said nothing else.  She simply placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and they both stood there for a long moment as Harry composed himself.

 

“Luna...you wouldn’t happen to have some spare Wrackspurts around, would you?” Harry asked.

 

“Whyever would you want those?” Luna asked, but her voice was kind and non-judgemental.

 

“I...I was just thinking that it would be nice not to worry about anything for awhile.  To have my thoughts be as blurry as my eyesight without glasses.” Harry turned back to look at Luna, his eyes still red from crying.

 

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any Wrackspurts, Harry,” Luna said, taking her hand from his shoulder and placing it gently against Harry’s cheek.  She smiled when he closed his eyes and pressed into her touch with obvious enjoyment. “I may, however, have something that will do just as well.”

 

“What--mmmph!” Harry started to say, but Luna moved inhumanly fast and before he knew what was happening, she was kissing him and kissing him and his mind was going fuzzy and he realized that Luna was quite right indeed.  He had completely forgotten everything but the sweet taste of  _ her _ in his mouth.

 

He wasn’t thinking, couldn’t think, and it was blissful.  She pulled him gently by the hand down the shore and away from the beach, until they were on a grassy knoll on the side of the estuary that led towards the open ocean. She pulled him down onto the grass, rolling and tumbling until he was on his back and she was above him, her hair whispering over his cheek as she nuzzled his neck.

 

“Do you still want to forget for awhile longer?” Luna’s voice was soft in Harry’s ear, but it filled him with a wild heat that poured outward through his body from his heart and it was then that he  _ knew _ what she was asking of him.

 

_ Yes _ , beat his heart.

 

“ _ Yes _ ,” he whispered, “And you?”

 

“ _ Yes _ ,” she whispered back, and he could feel her heart beating in frantic time with his own.

 

After, both of them knew that everything had changed.  And regardless of what trials lay ahead, their hearts now knew something that could not be unlearned.

 

For, though one cannot see or touch their love for each other, they both knew it was as real as anything they’d ever known in the world.


End file.
